'I'm not sending my men out to comb the streets uselessly. We'll never find out who killed Albie Frobisher. It could have been any one of a thousand people-ten thousand! Who knows who went into that house? Anyone! Anyone at all. Nobody sees
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them-that's the nature of the place-and you bloody well know that as well as I do. I'm not wasting an inspector's time, yours or anyone else's, chasing after a hopeless case.
'Now get out of here and find that arsonist! You know who he is-so arrest him before we have another fire! And if I hear you mention Maurice Jerome, the Way bournes, or anything else to do with it again, I'll put you back on the beat-and that I swear-so help me, God!'
Pitt said nothing more. He turned on his heel and walked out, leaving Athelstan still standing, his face crimson, his fists clenched on the desk.
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C-harlotte was stunned when Pitt told her that Albie was dead; it was something she had not even considered, in spite of the terrifying number of deaths she had heard of among such people. Somehow it had not occurred to her that Albie, whose face and even something of his feelings she knew, would die within the space of her brief acquaintance with his life.
'How?' she demanded furiously, caught by surprise as well as pain. 'What happened to him?'
Pitt looked tired; there were fine lines of strain on his face that she knew were not usually pronounced enough to see. He sat down heavily, close to the kitchen fire as though he had no warmth within.
She controlled the words that flew to her lips, and forced herself to wait. There was a wound inside him. She knew it as she did when Jemima cried, wordlessly clinging to her, trusting her to understand what was beyond explaining.
'He was murdered,' he said at last. 'Strangled, and then put in the river.' His face twisted. 'Irony in that, of a sort. All that water, dirty river water, not like Arthur Waybourne's nice clean bath. They pulled him out at Deptford.'
There was no point in making it worse. She pulled herself together and concentrated on the practical. After all, she consciously reminded herself, people like Albie died all over London all the time. The only difference with Albie was that they had perceived him as an individual; they knew he understood what he was as clearly as they did-surely even more so-and shared some of their disgust.
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'Are they going to let you investigate?' she asked. She was pleased with herself; her voice showed none of the struggle inside her, of her image of the wet body. 'Or do the Deptford police want it? There is a station at Deptford, isn't there?'
Tired enough to sleep even crumpled where he sat, he looked up at her. But if she dropped the spoon she held, turned, and took him in her arms, she knew it would only make it worse. She would be treating it like a tragedy, and him like a child, instead of a man. She continued stirring the soup she was making.
'Yes, there is,' he replied, unaware of her crowding thoughts. 'And no, they don't want it-they'll send it to us. He lived in Bluegate Fields, and he was part of one of our cases. And no, we're not going to investigate it. Athelstan says that if you are a prostitute, then murder is to be expected, and hardly to be remarked on. Certainly it is not worth police time to look into. It would be wasted. Customers kill people like that, or procurers do, or they die of disease. It happens every day. And God help us, he's right.'
She absorbed the news in silence. Abigail Winters had gone, and now Albie was murdered. Very soon, if they did not manage to find something new and radical enough to justify an appeal, Jerome would hang.
And Athelstan had closed the murder of Albie as insoluble- and irrelevant.
'Do you want some soup?' she asked without looking at him.
'What?'
